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Zitierempfehlung
Alexander von Humboldt: „Musquitos“, in: ders., Sämtliche Schriften digital, herausgegeben von Oliver Lubrich und Thomas Nehrlich, Universität Bern 2021. URL: <https://humboldt.unibe.ch/text/1821-Personal_Narrative_of-14-neu> [abgerufen am 27.04.2024].
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| Titel | Musquitos | ||||
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| Jahr | 1821 | ||||
| Ort | London | ||||
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Nachweis in: The Leeds Correspondent, a Literary, Mathematical and Philosophical Miscellany 3 (1821), S. 231–236.
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| Sprache | Englisch | ||||
| Typografischer Befund | Antiqua; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung. | ||||
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|231|
Persons who have not navigated the great rivers ofequinoctial
America, for instance, the Oroonoko andthe Rio Magdalena, can
scarcely conceive, how with-out interruption, at every instant
of life, you may betormented by insects flying in the air, and
how themultitude of these little animals may render vast re-gions wholly uninhabitable. However accustomedyou may be to endure pain without complaint, how-ever lively
an interest you may take in the objects ofyour researches, it
is impossible not to be constantlydisturbed by the moschettoes,
zancudoes, jejens, andtempraneroes, that cover the face and hands, pierce
theclothes with their long sucker in the form of a
needle,and, getting into the mouth and nostrils, set youcoughing and sneezing whenever you attempt to speakin the open air. In the missions of the Oroonoko, inthe villages placed on the banks of the river, sur-rounded by immense forests, the plaga de les
moscas,
“the plague of the flies,” affords an
inexhaustible subjectof conversation. When two persons meet in
the morn-ing, the first questions they address to each other
are,“How did you find the zancudoes during the
night?How are we to-day for the moschettoes?”
Thesequestions remind us of a Chinese form of
politeness,which indicates the ancient state of the country
whereit took birth. Salutations were made heretofore in
thecelestial empire, in the
following words, vou-tou-hou,
“Have you been incommoded in the night by the ser-pents?” We shall soon see, that on the banks of theTuamini, in the river Magdalena, and still more atChoco, the country of gold and platina, the Chinesecompliment on the serpents might be added to that ofthe moschettoes.
At Mandavaca we found an old missionary, whotold us with an air
of sadness, that he had spent his
|232|twenty years of moschettoes
in America. He desired usto look well at his legs, that we
might be able to tellone day, “poor alla (beyond the
sea,) what the poormonks suffer in the forests of
Cassiquiare.” Everysting leaving a small darkish brown
point, his legswere so speckled, that it was difficult to
recognize thewhiteness of his skin through the spots of
coagulatedblood. If the insects of the simulium genus
aboundin the Cassiquiare, which has white waters, the culices,or zancudoes, are so much the more rare; you scarcelyfind any there, while on the rivers of black waters
inthe Atabapo and the Rio Negro, there are generallysome zancudoes and no moschettoes.
I have just shown, from my own observations, howmuch the
geographical distribution of venomous in-sects varies in this
labyrinth of rivers, with white andblack waters. It were to be
wished, that a learnedentomologist could study on the spot the
specific dif-ferences of these noxious insects, which in the
torridzone, in spite of their littleness, act an important
partin the economy of nature. What appeared to us veryremarkable, and is a fact, known to all the missionaries,is, that the different species do not associate together,and that at different hours of the day you are stungby a distinct species. Every time that the scenechanges, and to use the simple expression of the mis-sionaries, other insects “mount guard,” you have afew minutes, often a quarter of an hour, of repose.The insects that disappear have not their places in-stantly supplied in equal numbers by their successors.From half after six in the morning till five in the after-noon, the air is filled with moschettoes; which havenot, as we find related in some travels, the form of ourgnats, but that of a small fly. They are simuliums ofthe family nemoceræ of the system of Latreille. Theirsting is as painful as that of stomoxes. It leaves a littlereddish brown spot, which
is extravasated and coagu-
|233|lated blood, where their proboscis has pierced the
skin.An hour before sun-set a species of small gnats,
calledtempraneros, because they
appear also at sun-rise, takethe place of the moschettoes.
Their presence scarcelylasts an hour and a half; they disappear
between sixand seven in the evening, or, as they say here,
afterthe Angelus (a la oracion).
After a few minutes’ re-pose, you feel yourself stung by
zancudoes anotherspecies of gnat
(culex) with very long legs. The zan-cudo, the proboscis of
which contains a sharp pointedsucker, causes the most acute
pain, and a swelling thatremains several weeks. Its hum
resembles that of ourgnats in Europe, but is louder and more
prolonged.The Indians pretend to distinguish “by
their song”the zancudoes and the
tempraneroes; the latter of whichare real twilight insects, while the zancudoes are mostfrequently nocturnal insects, and disappear towardssun-rise.
The culices of South America, have generally thewings, corselet, and legs of an azure colour, annulated,and variable from a mixture of spots of a metalliclustre. Here, as in Europe, the males, which are dis-tinguished by their feathered antennæ, are extremelyrare; you are seldom stung except by females. Thepreponderance of this sex explains the immense in-crease of the species, each female laying several hun-dred eggs. In going up one of the great rivers ofAmerica, it is observed, that the appearance of a newspecies
of culex denotes the approximity of a new streamflowing in.
The whites born in the torrid zone walk barefoot withimpunity in
the same apartment, where a European,recently landed, is
exposed to the attack of the niguas
or chegoes (pulex penetrans). These
animals almostinvisible to the eye, get under the nails of the
feet,and there acquire the size of a small pea by the
quickincrease of its eggs, which are placed in a bag
under|234|the belly of the insect.
The nigua, therefore, distin-guishes,
what the most delicate chemical analysiscould not distinguish,
the cellular membrane andblood of a European from those of a
Creole white. Itis not so with the moschettoes.
In the day, even when labouring at the oar, thenatives, in order
to chase the insects, are continuallygiving one another smart
slaps with the palm of thehand. Rude in all their movements,
they strikethemselves and their comrades mechanically duringtheir sleep. The violence of their blows reminds us ofthe Persian tale of the bear, that tried to kill with hispaw the insects on the forehead of his sleeping master.Near Maypures we saw some young Indians seated ina circle and rubbing cruelly each others’ backs withthe bark of trees dried at the fire. Indian womenwere occupied with a degree of patience, of which thecopper-coloured race alone are capable, in extirpatingby means of a sharp bone the little mass of coagulatedblood, that forms the centre of every sting, and givesthe skin a speckled appearance. One of the most bar-barous nations of the Oroonoko, that of the Ottomacs,is acquainted with the use of moschetto curtains (mos-quiteros) formed of a tissue of
fibres of the palm tree,
murichi. We had lately seen, that at Higuerote, on
thecoast of Caraccas, the people of a copper-colour
sleepburied in the sand. In the villages of the Rio
Magda-lena the Indians often invited us to stretch
ourselveswith them on ox-skins, near the church, in the
middle ofthe plaza grande, where they
had assembled all thecows in the neighbourhood. The proximity
of cattlegives some repose to man. The Indians of the UpperOroonoko and the Cassiquiare, seeing that Mr. Bonp-land could not prepare his herbal, on account of thecontinual torment of the moschettoes, invited him toenter their ovens, (hornitos). Thus
they call littlechambers, without doors or windows, into which
they|235|creep horizontally through a
very small opening.When they have driven away the insects by
means ofa fire of wet brush-wood, which emits a great deal
ofsmoke, they close the opening of the oven. The ab-sence of moschettoes is purchased dearly enough bythe excessive heat of stagnant air, and the smoke of atorch of copal, which lights the oven
during your stayin it. Mr. Bonpland, with courage, and patience
wellworthy of praise, dried hundreds of plants, shut up
inthese hornitos of the
Indians.
It is difficult not to smile at hearing the missionariesdispute on the size and voracity of the moschettoes atdifferent parts of the same river. In the centre of acountry ignorant of what is passing in the rest of theworld, this is the favourite subject of conversation.“How I pity your situation!” said the missionary ofthe Raudales to the missionary of Cassiquiare, at ourdeparture; “you are alone, like me, in this country oftigers and monkeys; with you fish is still more rare,and the heat more violent; but as for my flies, (miamoscas) I can boast, that with one of mine I wouldbeat three of yours.”
This voracity of insects in certain spots, the ragewith which
they attack man, the activity of the venomvarying in the same
species, are very remarkablefacts; which find their analogy,
however, in the classesof large animals. The crocodile of
Angostura pursuesmen, while at Nueva, Barcelona, in the Rio
Neveri,you may bathe tranquilly in the midst of these
carni-vorous reptiles. The jaguars of Maturin, Cumanacoa,and the isthmus of Panama, are cowardly in compari-son to those of the Upper Oroonoko. The Indianswell know, that the monkeys of some valleys caneasily be
tamed, while others of the same species,caught elsewhere, will
rather die of hunger, than sub-mit to slavery. I might have
added the example ofthe scorpion of Camana, which it is very
difficult to|236|distinguish from that of
the island of Trinidad, Ja-maica, Carthagena, and Guayaquil; yet
the former isnot more to be feared than the scorpio europœus (of thesouth of France,)
while the latter produces conse-quences far more alarming than
the scorpio occitanus,
(of Spain and Barbary.) At Carthagena and Guaya-quil, the sting of the scorpion (alaoran) instantlycauses the loss of speech. Sometimes a singular torporof the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen hours.The patient, when stung in the legs, stammers as ifhe had been struck with apoplexy.—Ibid.
MUSQUITOS.